>>>Aaron Swartz said:
> McBride, Brian <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
> > It is good practise when defining RDF namespaces to end them
> > in a character like '/' or '#' that can't be part of an XML
> > Qname. If you do that, and many do,then your algorithm works
> > just fine.
>
> This is what I was afraid of. So there is no definitive way to determine the
> namespace of an RDF "term"? Are RDF terms even considered to have specific
> namespaces -- or is this just a side-effect of the XMLNS system?
As I remember, this was the reason that rdfs:isDefinedBy was created,
so that you could express the relationship between a URI of a concept
and a URI of the namespace or thing at the namespace it is defined
in. Note the namespace does not necessarily have to point to a (RDF)
schema.
This is also useful when you have schemas that have no network
accessible URIs, very large schemas (e.g. Dewey for books) so you
don't want to use resolvable URIs for the namespace but might deliver
concepts in them and want to refer to the main schema -
[Classification XYZ in Dewey URI]->rdfs:isDefinedBy->[Dewey URI]
You can't look inside RDF namespace URIs or absolute URIs (after
resolving name:qname). If you want to known more about a concept R,
in the RDF model, look for a statement
R->rdfs:label->X
etc. and use that.
Dave